Yahoo! raiders step up attack on CEO, board

A hedge fund battling the management of Yahoo! called for the release of documents about the recruitment of chief executive Scott Thompson in a scathing filing Monday with regulators. The filing by the Third Point with Securities and Exchange Commission came after the hedge fund's deadline passed on its demand for the ouster of Thompson for misrepresenting his educational background. Third Point, which owns 5.8 percent of the struggling tech giant, filed its slate of candidates for the Yahoo! board, ensuring a proxy battle, as it stepped up its attack on management. "Yahoo! has not explained how its Search Committee could hire a CEO without doing a rudimentary check on the applicant's credentials -- a check that would have quickly revealed that Mr. Thompson did not have a computer science degree," the filing said "The inaccuracies in Mr. Thompson's educational background are not isolated. (Patti) Hart, a member of the Nominating Committee and the chair of the Search Committee herself has exaggerated her academic background." Third Point also offered a series of criticisms from others in its filing about Yahoo!'s handling of the matter, based mainly on news reports. "Legendary investor Warren Buffett stated on CNBC on May 7, 2012 that 'it doesn't sound like an inadvertent error... If you can't trust the people you're working with, you've got a problem.'" Yahoo! has said it was continuing its review of the matter. Third Point, led by activist investor Daniel Loeb, said that "Yahoo!'s failure of process is especially damning given the Nominating Committee's summary rejection of all but one of the candidates that Third Point has proposed be appointed to the Board, thus forcing a wasteful proxy contest at the 2012 annual meeting."